We really appreciate your visits! Every Friday, our goal is to provide you with a few laughs, some inspiring stories and some food for thought. We look forward to your visiting with us again next Friday! Y'all come on back now... ya hear!

----------

----------

3 beliefs of people who refuse to quit

I worked on building the backbone to find other ways to get back in the game. I was resilient and kept at it until another opportunity presented itself.

Resilience is not just about having backbone. It’s building up everything that supports our backbone, starting with the way we think about the negative events that happen in our life.

Let’s face it, we need resilience when the crap hits the fan and things go bad. If everything was a bed or roses, we would never need to dig down to find greater strength and deeper meaning.

Mental toughness is developing a tough mindset that refuses to quit when life throws a curveball. People who refuse to quit are game-ready when opportunities show up as obstacles.

Martin Seligman is a psychologist who has spent decades studying how people deal with setbacks. In his book, Learned Optimism, he states that we all have a way of explaining the bad events that happen to us. This habit of thought starts in childhood and stems from our view of our place in the world.

The crux of mental toughness is being willing to take responsibility for our actions. As Seligman states, people cannot learn how to be resilient unless they assume responsibility for the way they think about themselves.

Maintaining positive beliefs about our abilities and our situation can enable us to become people who refuse to quit or give up on ourselves.

1) Nothing Is Permanent

When I learned the undercover project would be shut down, I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. Failure hurts and it’s stupid to pretend it doesn’t. Failure makes everyone helpless, at least for that moment.

The difference between remaining helpless and bouncing back is by accepting that negative events are simply a part of the human condition. Aging, dying, and pain are inevitable. Joy, laughter, and happiness are also inevitable. And all will dissipate despite our best efforts to make them last forever.

Seligman states that people who refuse to quit do not feel that negative events will always happen to them. They also do not feel as though an opportunity will never come their way again.

The two key words to remember are always and never. Banish those words from your vocabulary and replace them with sometimes and lately. The negative event or situation becomes transient rather than permanent.

Affective forecasting is predicting how you will feel in the future. As it turns out, we’re terrible at it. We’re not good judges of what will make us happy. For example, in predicting how events like winning the lottery might affect their happiness, people are likely to overestimate how wonderful their life will become.

The same is true of interpreting how negative events will affect their life. People overestimate how their life will be ruined or negatively impacted by the event.

How To Make It Work For You: When you are down in the dumps and beating up on yourself, think about how much worse things could be for you. This forces you to identify the stuff in your life for which you are grateful.

2) Get Specific About Pervasiveness

It was tempting for me to throw up my hands and declare that I would never be an effective undercover agent. This would be a universal, or blanket explanation, that implied I lacked the ability to ever be good at it.

Instead, I got specific about why my cover had been blown. I was helpless, and a failure - in that particular situation. However, I also knew I could learn from that experience and move on.

People who refuse to quit are not drama queens who make every negative event a catastrophe. Yes, crap happens but people who refuse to quit narrow down the reasons why something was a failure.

They are specific about what went wrong and why. Again, they are willing to accept responsibility for their actions and for the way they think about themselves.

“Catastrophizing” implies that you are a loser in all areas of your life, not just in the troubled area. This thinking is pervasive and can lead to people giving up on everything.

How To Make It Work For You: Hope is the cure for catastrophizing. Finding specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope. When you are confronted with a misfortune, check that your self-talk is not hopeless. Instead, inject a large dose of hope into your language.

3) Be Wary Of Personalization

I blamed myself for my failure as an undercover agent. I needed to take responsibility, and I did. As a result, my self-esteem plummeted. I began to see myself as worthless and not making a significant contribution to my squad. I personalized the incident, and as a result, it affected the way I felt about myself.

The way we think about permanence and pervasiveness affects the things we do. The way we personalize a negative event controls how we feel about ourselves. People who never give up like themselves because they believe they are, and have been, the catalyst for good things. They do not believe good things come from other people or circumstances.

They accept that failure and misfortune will happen along the way, but they have hope that they will be resilient and bounce back because they’ve done it before.

Remember that personalization can be internal, where you blame yourself for what has happened. It can also be external, where you blame everyone else for your misfortune.

How To Make It Work For You: Optimism is not about ignoring life’s challenges. It’s the mental toughness to discipline our minds to create more powerful explanations about what is going on in our life.

----------

Thankful! ... Josh Groban

Our lives are filled with so many blessings if we can just teach ourselves to recognize them. Josh, you are absolute proof that God exists! Thank you so much for this beautiful song. God bless you!

As the co-writer of this song with melody by David Foster, I want to thank you Randa, for making a very emotional poignant video that complements the song beautifully. With appreciation and wishes for peace. – Carole Bayer Sager

You know the Democrats are desperate… when they make whack-job Maxine Waters their leader and mascot. It’s amazing someone this stupid, can find people who are even more stupid, to vote for her. Corrupt Moron Maxine has been in the U.S. Congress for 27 years... and she's gotten rich doing nothing.

----------

Liberalism in America is a big fat lie! Liberals talk about "our values" but their corrupt, divisive, liberal values… are not America’s values!

Hillary Clinton’s defeat is precisely what it seems to be: a rejection not only of the Democratic Party but of contemporary warped, corrosive liberalism. Not only did Clinton lose, but Obama’s legacy was also rejected as an epic failure.

Democrats today may see themselves as heirs to a progressive tradition that traces its lineage back to racist Woodrow Wilson. But that does not describe the Democratic Party that elevated Obama and Hillary Clinton to the position of standard bearer.

Today’s version of progressivism represented by Obama and Clinton accommodates present-day Godless criminality and hate. Rather than trying to build America up, Democrats now willfully create division and tear America down.

Even after losing the election, the divisive Democrat party still doesn’t get it. Corrupt Democrats and the corrupt liberal media have doubled down on their lies and division. The moral of the story… never, ever trust a liberal!

Here are some of devious Democrat's "schemes" for the week... 08/11/2017

Most politicians sing the tune of their campaign contributors. Donald Trump is the rare exception. Every member of our corrupt Congress is bought and paid for. None of them work for the American citizens… they are paid prostitutes.

Most of the biggest corporations are run by liberals… Google, Facebook, Twitter, Disney, Comcast, Apple, GE, Microsoft, etc. ALL these corporations backed Corrupt Obama and wanted Crooked Hillary to win. Why? Because liberals are corrupt, unethical, immoral puppets.

One Google employee caused an uproar this week with a lengthy memo criticizing the company’s diversity obsession. The letter, which went viral internally at Google before getting leaked to the press, bemoaned the company’s “ideological echo chamber” and its zeal to hire workers based on their group identity, rather than their skill.

The document made leftists furious, and soon the calls began pouring in for the memo author’s termination. Google appeared to have gotten the message from left-wing activists, as it fired the memo writer, James Damore, Monday night. Damore, who worked as a senior engineer for Google, said his dismissal was due to “perpetuating gender stereotypes.”

Google’s message to the world is that it will not tolerate criticism of its politically correct policies from its employees. Though the tech giant claims with a straight face it values a diversity of viewpoints, it’s clear it doesn’t.

Google revealed that it’s in thrall to the dictates of left-wing activists with this termination. It’s a trait Google shares with several other corporations, and that leftist dominance is coming at the price of valuing free speech.

The tech world in particular has recently shown the growth of this developing trend. Twitter is notorious for putting in place “anti-harassment” policies to fight “offensive” speech and suspending numerous accounts on political grounds. Facebook is starting to target “hate speech” due to pressure exerted by left-wing bureaucrats in Europe.

The funding service Patreon, which many writers and podcasters use to support themselves, has banned several right-wing personalities from its platform over their viewpoints. At the same time, Patreon has let Antifa-linked groups that openly advocate violence to remain on its platform for long periods of time.

YouTube recently announced that it was going to do more to clamp down on “controversial” content and the video host has a well-documented history of demonetizing clips for expressing the wrong political views.

On the same day Google fired Damore, AirBnB confirmed it was deleting accounts that the company suspected may be associated with an upcoming alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. AirBnB did this in order to prove it is a welcoming platform, according to its own statement.

Apparently, welcoming means banning people who may be suspected — just suspected — of claiming allegiance to the alt-right. Going back a bit further, there’s Mozilla firing its founder Brendan Eich for quietly donating to anti-gay marriage initiatives, an event that now serves as an early precursor to the current Google mess.

While all these companies are busy rooting out wrongthink, they also like to burnish their progressive bona fides. Google often uses its famous doodles to promote left-wing causes and notions.

Twitter’s news aggregator leans far to the left and rarely carries right-leaning points of view. AirBnB offered free housing for migrants left “stranded” by President Trump’s travel ban. And pretty much all of these companies changed their logos to a rainbow pattern to celebrate when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2015.

The Google firing is a chilling example of a major corporation firing someone solely over their viewpoints. This is different from companies kicking off users from the platforms they provide. Taking away a person’s livelihood over their political views is far more serious than ensuring they can’t tweet anymore.

To many Americans, the idea of being unemployable for your political stances seems outrageous. But that’s what these left-wing activists want.

Those who wanted Damour’s head claimed they needed his termination in order to make Google a “safer” work environment. This is the exact kind of bullshit campus agitators use to shut down speakers they disagree with.

It’s all about power for these activists. They just deploy their status as minority victims in order to get what they want. The Google scandal has nothing to do with creating a better work environment, it’s all about browbeating the tech giant to follow left-wing standards.

These activists succeeded masterfully in doing so. Many in America are disgusted with what they see on college campuses and how speech is suppressed and identity politics rule supreme.

Some may take comfort that these “snowflakes” will get a rude awakening in the real world. As I wrote in my book “No Campus for White Men,” the major threat of campus insanity is having it spread into the rest of society.

The Google ordeal shows what could be the future of work environments when campus agitators grow up and dominate corporate HR. Your employment will depend on you voicing the right opinions and keeping any dissent hidden deep inside your mind.

Meanwhile, your company will openly advocate for left-wing causes and use its power to make the lives of known dissidents as miserable as possible. Because it’s woke for a major corporation to deny services to wrong thinkers, but it’s fascism if a tiny bakery does the same to a gay couple.

Two years ago, I wrote that the corporate world, not the government, poses the most serious threat to free expression in America. Time has only proven that point to be more true than ever.

The right to free speech won’t mean much when we, as a society, accept that those who voice unpopular opinions deserve to lose their jobs, their privacy and their ability to speak in the public forums of our time.

Corporations have a lot of freedom in America to operate as they please. But that doesn’t mean the public should acquiesce to Silicon Valley determining only one side should have the right to free speech.

----------

Los Angeles and all of clueless liberals are killing themselves... money paid to illegals in Los Angeles will shock you!

TAXPAYERS REVOLT AGAINST LIBERAL WASTE! Illegal immigrants received nearly $1.3 billion in welfare money from Los Angeles County during 2015/2016.

That gigantic sum comes out to about 25% of what Los Angeles County spent on welfare during that period - showing that illegal immigrants are, in fact, putting huge pressure on the beleaguered welfare systems in the United States.

Los Angeles is a sanctuary city, with large numbers of illegal immigrants from Mexico - it’s commonly called the second most populous city in by Mexican population, after Mexico City. It’s controversial welfare rules allow illegal immigrants with American-born children to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.

However, even as Los Angeles and other cities in California continue to rail against Donald Trump, they’re reaping the benefits of his hardline immigration policies. Los Angeles County is expected to spend $200 million less in 2017 than 2016, due to 8,000 fewer illegal families collecting benefits.

“The amazing thing is that everyone was expecting a big wall to stop illegal immigration,” said former state Republican Party Chairman Shawn Steel. But he adds that a wall wasn’t even necessary: “The decrease has been enhanced dramatically by ICE agents just doing their job.”

----------

CNBC's self-defense tips for store robberies... Throw Fruit?

If you find yourself in a life-or-death struggle with an armed assailant, do yourself a favor and disregard what NBC just told its viewers. Today Show correspondent, Jeff Rosen explained how to defend yourself if caught the middle of a convenience store robbery.

Instead of encouraging law-abiding citizens to use their Second Amendment rights or extolling the virtue of firearms training, Rosen showed how throwing whatever you can find at the gunman, in this case, fruit and a packet of oatmeal cookies, could save your life.

Rosen, if nothing else, is consistently ludicrous. While discussing a rise in muggings, he touted a smartphone app as the best means of defense. In a report on home invasions, he suggested spraying attackers with bug spray.

Even if a Snickers hit with enough force to disorient a hardened thug, you would still have to sprint out of the store praying for a miracle to avoid the bullets likely headed your direction at 700 miles per hour.

Fortunately, there is a tried and true method to deterring violent felons: a vigilant gun owner. For 30 years, the Department of Justice has known that higher gun ownership rates correlate with reduced violent crime rates. Good luck explaining that to Matt Lauer and company.

----------

Liar Liberal Chuckie Schumer has never held a real job. He's been a dishonest New York politician for 44 years.
Unfortunately, our U.S. Congress is controlled by slimeball Democrats like Schumer. Things will never really change, until corrupt Democrats and Republicans are forced out of power.

Cool Photos
Yi ethnic minority girls wait to participate in a traditional performance to celebrate the Torch Festival in Butuo County, Sichuan province, China, on July 18, 2017.

Colombia's Orlando Duque competes in round 3 of the men's High Diving competition at the 2017 FINA World Championships in Budapest, on July 30, 2017.

A Monster Jam truck performs during the first-ever monster truck event in Beijing's iconic "Bird's Nest" National Stadium on July 29, 2017.

Visitors to Scandinavia's top amusement parks, Liesberg, fall on Europe's tallest drop tower, AtmosFear at 110km/h on July 30, 2017 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

The Rio Grande forms the U.S.-Mexico border while winding through the Santa Elena Canyon in the Big Bend region on August 1, 2017 near Lajitas, Texas. Logistical challenges, such as the terrain of Big Bend in west Texas, are just some of the complications facing the construction of a border wall proposed by President Trump.

Finishing touches are put on an art piece on the final day of 'Upfest,' Europe's largest street art festival on July 31, 2017 in Bristol, England.

The annual event, in the hometown of guerrilla artist Banksy, started in 2008 and is now Europe's biggest street-art festival, attracting more than 350 artists from across the globe to live paint on walls and surfaces in 37 locations around Bedminster and Southville over three days.

Hot lava flows down Mount Sinabung volcano in the night in Karo, North Sumatra on July 30, 2017.

U.S. Navy Blue Angels fly during a practice session over boats lined up along a log boom on Lake Washington in Seattle on August 3, 2017. The team will perform Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the annual Seafair Air Show.

Friday-funnies...Only great minds can afford a simple style. “Silent is a source of great strength.” -- Lao Tzu “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.” -- Steve Jobs “My father was my teacher, but mostly he was a great Dad.” -- Beau Bridges “Within the covers of the Bible… are the answers for all the problems men and women face.” -- Ronald Reagan

----------

Dirty DC Politics... all the political scoundrels pointing the finger at Trump, for all the dirty deeds they themselves are guilty of

After losing the election in a spectacular manner, Hillary and Podesta invented the 'Russia/Trump collusion’ fairy tale not only as an excuse, but also as a means to divert attention away from their very real criminal corruption.

They love to blame their enemies for the evil that they themselves commit, which is an old Saul Alinksy trick. Using the Clinton Foundation as a money-laundering operation, Hillary accepted ‘pay for play’ cash from Russia as part of her Uranium One deal.

While she was Secretary of State, her husband received $500,000 for a speech he delivered in Moscow. Putin was obviously buying influence from Hillary. Now that she’s not president and can’t easily cover up her traitorous misdeeds, she found it necessary to paint President Trump as the traitor.

Hillary is using Mueller as her personal bloodhound. He’s out sniffing on a trail with no scent, but he still hopes it will lead to President Trump regardless. A far less pristine trail leads to Crooked Hillary as well as Obama, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and many others in the corrupt DC establishment, Democrat and Republican.

The document “establishes the federal response plan for a cyber incident that is (or a group of related cyber incidents that together are) likely to result in demonstrable impact to election infrastructure during the 2016 United States presidential election.

Furthermore, Obama's plan appears to include contingencies for martial law... "Though the plan emphasized the vital role that local authorities would play in combating the hackers, clarifying that they would have primary jurisdiction during an attack...

It noted that for the deployment of “armed federal law enforcement agents” who would be deployed to polling places if hackers managed to halt voting.

It also foresaw the deployment of “Active and Reserve" military forces and members of the National Guard “upon a request from a federal agency and the direction of the Secretary of Defense or the President.”

American construction workers get a raise... now that Pres Trump has cut illegals in America, construction companies hire American

Construction workers can thank Donald Trump for a big pay bump—after his crackdown on illegal immigration.

Construction work has been dominated for decades by illegal immigrants. But, since Trump took office, illegal immigration is down 60% - and many illegal aliens who are already here are contemplating moving back to their home countries.

Because the supply of workers has led to a labor shortage, wages for construction workers are already booming - rising as much as 30 percent in just a few months. The worker shortage has been felt most dramatically in border states—where construction is even more dependent on the labor of illegal immigrants.

"Half of the workers in construction in Texas are undocumented," explained Stan Marek, the CEO of Marek Construction, to Fox News. "We do hear that there are a lot of undocumented workers that are leaving the state, going to other states that don't have the anti-immigrant sentiment of Texas and many of them are going back to Mexico."

The unprecedented fall in the number of illegal immigrants comes from Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and his willingness to enforce already-existing laws. Stronger actions, like Trump’s plan to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, haven’t even yet been passed.

But while the original film was a surprise box office hit, the sequel is ranked just #15 in the U.S. box office during its first weekend of wide release.

During the weekend, the movie pulled in just $900,000. That averages to a pitiful $5,000 per screen, for the entire weekend. In contrast, the original “An Inconvenient Truth” defied box office expectations - earning $1.35 million during its first weekend.

Not only did the original outperformed the sequel by 50% , but it did so on less than half the number of screens: just 77 screens were showing “An Inconvenient Truth” during its first weekend, compared to 180 screens for the sequel.

“An Inconvenient Truth” would go on to earn $49.8 million in the box office, as well as the 2006 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. But based on early box office numbers - as well as mixed reviews from critics - its clear that the sequel might not fare nearly as well.

When mankind first created nuclear weapons, we took every possible precaution to ensure those doomsday devices could never be used by the wrong hands. Well, we took most of the precautions, and we ensured our weapons of mass destruction could almost never be used improperly.

OK, OK, we took like one precaution, and we ensured our nuclear weapons could only be used by somebody who really wanted them. Or at least kind of wanted them. All right, we basically did nothing. You happy?

3) Hundreds Of U.S. Nuclear Launch Codes Were Set To 00000000

At the height of the Cold War, the United States had over a thousand nuclear-tipped Minuteman intercontinental missiles to serve as our primary strategic deterrent. That's a lot of death to keep track of, so Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara saw to it that each missile had special locks installed (called Permissive Action Links).

Anyone who wanted to fire one of those babies off couldn't do so without entering a secret eight-digit code. Unhinged military personnel, would-be terrorists, allies we asked to hold our missiles for a bit while our parents were in town -- none of them could launch our ICBMs without approval from the government.

And the PALs we employed were indeed almost impossible to bypass, and could have greatly reduced the risk of an unauthorized nuclear launch. That is, if the generals in charge hadn't set all the authorization codes to '00000000'.

They were afraid that they wouldn't be able to track down the codes quickly enough, should the actual need arise. (A reasonable fear if you've ever tried to remember your password for lunareclipsewatcher.biz.) So instead, they set the code to literally the first thing anyone would guess without even trying.

Oh, but don't worry - according to Bruce Blair, who worked as a launch officer in Montana, the all-zeroes code only remained in place for about a decade.

2) Nuclear Fail-Safes Fail, Are Not Safe

When a plane broke apart over North Carolina in 1961, it dropped the two hydrogen bombs it was carrying, each of which held more power than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Because of the violent impact, one of the bombs presumed it was a wartime scenario and behaved exactly as a nuclear weapon should when deployed in a wartime scenario: Its triggers deployed, and five out of six fail-safe interlocks went off in their proper sequence.

Only one switch technically "failed," and it didn't detonate a rogue nuclear warhead by mistake. As Secretary of Defense McNamara put it: "By the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted."

A nuclear explosion like no civilian population has ever seen, and whose effects would have covered Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and even New York. And lest you think this was an isolated incident, haha, no, it very much wasn't. The Cold War wouldn't have been so "cold" had it not been for some serious luck.

A U.S. nuclear weapon study recorded more than 1,200 accidents between 1950 and 1968 which almost led to catastrophe. 1,200 in less than two decades. The world went through near-apocalypses 600 times more often than we go through underwear.

1) In A Crisis, The President Has Four Minutes To Make A Call On Retaliation

If, how, and when to deploy a nuclear weapon is probably the heaviest decision a human being can face. To properly weigh all the factors and potentials for disaster, both foreseeable and unforeseeable, is virtually impossible to do alone.

That's why the nuclear protocol is specifically designed to take away any real decision-making that the president might have to do, leaving him about a four-minute window to choose from a set of limited options, like picking a McDonald's value meal.

The U.S. military's reaction to a detected nuclear launch is built on the idea of a retaliatory strike. According to Walter Slocombe, former undersecretary of Defense, the time window for launching a retaliatory weapon under attack is under 30 minutes.

But the majority of that time goes into mechanical steps, like detecting the enemy launch, relaying and confirming that message through the right channels, and finally, lastly, telling the president. After all that, a president has just a few minutes to decide whether or not we'd all like living in a Fallout-style wasteland.

That means that every time there is a false alarm in our detection system - and there certainly have been false alarms (close ones) - a chain reaction begins that ends with the president having less than the playtime of "Paranoid Android" to figure out whether to unleash hell.

Regardless of your thoughts about current or recent presidents, that can't be comforting.

----------

----------

----------

"Gentle on My Mind" ... Glen Campbell (terrific guitar break)

When Glen Campbell starts his brilliant solo, surrounded by all the GREATEST legends of Country Music, every single ONE OF THEM is absolutely DAZZLED..... (especially the guitar players.) He will live FOREVER as one of the greatest guitarists of ALL TIME.

Think about it... Willie Nelson, Chet Atkins, Roy Clark, Crystal Gayle and Roger Miller (among many other celebrated artists) applauded Glen's inimitable styling and delivery. There was such admiration for his talent in that studio, that might have been the pinnacle of his career. Sigh... such days are behind us I'm afraid. thank you for all you gave us Glen.

It is the super-thin “wonder material” scientists think could revolutionize every aspect of human life. Now graphene – which is just one atom thick and a million times thinner than human hair – looks set to storm the catwalks of Paris, New York and Milan in a hi-tech twist on the little black dress.

On Wednesday, researchers teamed up with a wearable technology company to unveil the world’s first LBD containing graphene, which is 200 times stronger than steel and conducts electricity better than anything else known to man.

Unveiled at the Trafford Centre in Manchester, the city where graphene was first isolated by two scientists who went on to win the Nobel prize for their discovery, the dress changes colour in sync with the wearer’s breathing, using tiny LED lights.

Graphene was used to power the LED lights and as a sensor to record the wearer’s breathing, while more everyday materials like crin – a woven lightweight nylon fabric – were used to frame the dress.

Francesca Rosella, chief creative director for Cute Circuit, whose hi-tech creations have been modeled by Katy Perry and Nicole Scherzinger, said: “Graphene has never been used in the fashion industry before."

“Being the first to use it was a real honour, allowing us to have a lot of fun creating the stunning little black graphene dress and showcasing graphene’s amazing properties.”

Graphene was first isolated in 2004 by University of Manchester scientists Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, who won the Nobel prize in physics for their work in 2010. Scientists believe the material has thousands of potential commercial applications, including being used in aeroplanes and high-speed trains.

The designers hope the technology could eventually be used to make a dress that can be programmed to show any colour or design.

Dr Paul Wiper, research associate at Manchester’s National Graphene Institute, said: “This is a fantastic project; graphene is still very much in its infancy for real-world applications and showcasing its amazing properties through the forum of fashion is very exciting."

“The dress is truly one of a kind and shows what creativity, imagination and a desire to innovate can create using graphene and related two-dimensional materials.”

Richard Paxton, general manager of intu Trafford Centre, said: “Technology and fashion have come together to create what is the world’s most high-tech dress and could become the blueprint for what our millions of customers will be wearing in the future.”

----------

Some people are literally robbing God: 1 in 10 Protestant Churches experience embezzlement from the people within... 1 in 2 Churches only has enough cash for four months of services

by Bob Smietana, Christianity Today

Churches and other faith groups collect tens of billions of dollars in donations each year. But not all of it ends up where it’s supposed to. About 1 in 10 Protestant churches has had someone embezzle funds, according to a new survey of 1,000 Protestant senior pastors from LifeWay Research.

That figure isn’t surprising, said LifeWay executive director Scott McConnell. Most churches rely on volunteers to handle their finances, he said. Those volunteers are usually honest. But churches often lack systems to catch those who aren’t. As a result, he said, money that could have been used for ministry goes missing.

“Churches run on trust - but they also know people are imperfect and can be tempted,” said McConnell. “That’s why safeguarding a church’s finances is an important part of ministry.” Overall, 9 percent of pastors say that their church has had funds embezzled, while 91 percent say they are not aware of any embezzlement.

Churches of Christ ministers are more likely to say their church had funds embezzled (16%) when compared to Baptist (7%) or Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (6%). Pastors of mid-sized churches - those with 100 to 249 members - are less likely to say funds have been embezzled (6%) than those with 250 or more members (12%).

LifeWay’s survey echoes a smaller 2012 study of churches in Kansas and Missouri, which found that 13.4 percent of churches had experienced embezzlement or other fraud.

A study of more than 2,400 fraud cases at businesses and nonprofits by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners found 2.4 percent of cases involved churches or other charitable groups. The average loss was $82,000. LifeWay researchers asked pastors when their church’s financial books were last audited and how much cash they had in reserves.

Half of pastors (47%) say their church has had a complete audit in the last year. Two-thirds (66%) say their church’s books have been audited within the last four years. About a third of pastors (34%) say the most recent audit was more than five years ago (10%), never (10%), or unknown (14%).

Among other findings:

Methodist pastors are most likely (74%) to say their church had a complete audit within the last year.

Baptist (17%) and Pentecostal (18%) pastors are more likely to say their church had a complete audit more than five years ago. Lutheran (3%), Methodist (4%) and Holiness pastors (4%) are less likely.

Church of Christ (16%) and Pentecostal pastors (17%) are more likely than pastors of other denominations to say their church has never been audited. Presbyterian/Reformed pastors (7%), Lutheran (5%), and Methodist (2%) are less likely to say the same.

African-American pastors (25%) are the most likely ethnic group to say their church has never had an audit.

Most churches realize that having an audit can be good thing, said McConnell. It’s another aspect of being a good steward of a church’s finances. “It’s helpful to have a second set of eyes look at the church books,” he said.

Many churches function with little margin for error when it comes to their finances. According to their pastors, 1 in 4 churches (26%) only has enough cash on hand to cover seven or fewer weeks. A similar number (24%) have between eight and 15 weeks of operating reserves.

Meanwhile, 15 percent have between 16 and 25 weeks of reserves, while 12 percent have between 26 and 51 weeks. Almost 1 in 4 churches (23%) have a year or more of reserves. Smaller churches often have more weeks of reserves than larger congregations.

Among small churches—those with fewer than 50 people—27 percent say they have a year of cash reserves. By contrast, 15 percent of churches with more than 250 people have a year of reserves. An earlier study found about a third of churches have struggled to make their budget, said McConnell. So it’s not surprising that some churches have few reserves.

“It takes a lot of faith to run a church, especially when finances are tight,” he said. “But some churches may be missing out on ministry, because there’s not enough money in the bank to respond to needs and opportunities that arise.”

Methodology:

The phone survey of Protestant pastors was conducted August 22 - September 16, 2016. The calling list was a stratified random sample, drawn from a list of all Protestant churches.

Quotas were used for church size. Each interview was conducted with the senior pastor, minister or priest of the church called. Responses were weighted by region to more accurately reflect the population.

The completed sample is 1,000 surveys. The sample provides 95 percent confidence that the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.2 percent. Margins of error are higher in sub-groups.

----------

You never knowOne of my favorite things about New York is our slogan for the New York State Lottery. I'm sure you've seen it, on the subway or a billboard, which is just, 'New York State Lottery: Hey, you never know.' That's what they went with; they had a meeting.... No one else advertises that way. Just like, "Starbucks: Maybe it makes you immortal, I dunno."

----------

President Trump is in the middle of his 17-day trip to his New Jersey golf course, but he says it isn’t a vacation. And the staff at the White House said, “For us it is.” -- Jimmy Fallon

The Kremlin just released photos of Vladimir Putin on vacation. Putin was like, “Forget about the dad bod, feast your eyes on the Vlad bod.” -- Jimmy Fallon

As much as people complain about Trump going on vacation, at least he keeps his shirt on. -- Jimmy Fallon

Sunday’s episode of “Game of Thrones” will be the show’s shortest episode ever at just 50 minutes. Yeah, so after the opening credits, that’s only two minutes of actual show. -- Jimmy Fallon

The White House is undergoing a $3.4 million renovation. Trump said he’s hoping to replace the kitchen, the carpeting, and the attorney general. -- Conan O’Brien

The dating app Tinder recently paid a woman's flight change fee after she missed her flight because she was on a great Tinder date. That's how rare great Tinder dates are. If you have one, you win a free trip. -- James Corden

Elon Musk recently announced that the government has approved a plan for something called a "Hyperloop" that will transport people between New York and D.C. in just 29 minutes. "Hyperloop?" I don't know how much I trust [that as] public transportation. That sounds like it should be a ride at Six Flags. -- James Corden

Apparently this thing shoots people through a tube at 700 miles an hour! And, when you arrive in New York it drops you straight off at Macy's so you can buy a clean pair of underwear. -- James Corden

Hospitals in Chicago have seen the number of baby deliveries double this month. Which would be remarkable, until you realize that's exactly nine months after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. -- James Corden

This morning Trump tweeted he will be working in New Jersey while the White House goes through a long-planned renovation. Yeah, the White House does need some work. Apparently that place has a ton of leaks. -- James Corden

----------

Trump's Approval Rating Skyrockets!

President Trump’s poll numbers are surging. The latest poll from Zogby Analytics showed Trump with a 45 percent approval rating - his highest in their poll since February.

"The president's approval rating has rebounded somewhat since our July poll,” said the polling analysis.

Following a series of intense weeks, Trump's approval numbers have moved up slightly, especially among his base and a few other sub-groups not known for their support of the president.”

According to Zogby, Trump’s numbers increased due to rising rates of approval among a number of smaller subgroups.

Among Hispanics, Trump’s approval rating increased from 31 percent to 42 percent since July. Among union householders, Trump’s approval was up to 51 percent from 43 percent, and among voters in the West, Trump’s approval was up from 33 percent to 43 percent.

Trump remains popular with both men - where a majority give him their approval—and Republican voters, with 76 percent approval.

DNC is surrounded by corruption, mystery, murder... the Democrats have been overtaken by Nazi Globalists

DNC computer expert Seth Rich was murdered by Democrats, for supplying WikiLeaks with files and emails of the DNC corruption and vote rigging. The night of his murder, Rich was partying with Pakistani Muslim Brotherhood spy Imran Awan.

The Awan brothers were hired by Debbie Wasserman Shultz. Through her recommendations, the Awan spies infiltrated the computer system of 37 Democrats in Congress. These spies were paid millions of dollars and it is suspected they were blackmailing Congress Democrats.

America’s U.S. Congress is now totally corrupt. All Democrats in Congress are anti-American atheist liberals, on a mission to destroy the United States. There are also dozens of Rino Republicans in Congress, who are working with corrupt Democrats.

Components of the newly-proposed Republican immigration plan have big support among Americans, according to the latest polls.

The immigration plan, which was introduced by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.), would recalibrate the U.S. immigration system to favor skilled workers over family connections. It would also dramatically cut legal immigration by half.

• 58 percent of Americans back the bill’s plan to limit the number of refugees receiving permanent residency.

• 60 percent of Americans back the plan to create a “points system” that would give potential immigrants points based on education, English proficiency, and prospective salary in the U.S.

• 62 percent also believe that English proficiency should be a factor in determining whether or not an immigrant is allowed to come to the U.S. Other portions of the bill don’t have majority support, but do have plurality support.

•
48 percent of voters support reducing the number of legal immigrants, while just 39 percent oppose it.

• 45 percent support ending “unlimited family chain migration,” which allows residents to petition to get green cards for their extended family members, such as adult children and siblings.

The bill has not yet been scheduled for a vote in the U.S. Senate.

----------

What to say when job interviewer asks your current salary?

"What's your current salary?" a hiring manager asks you. Instantly you tense up, unsure of how to respond. It's a common — and uncomfortable — job interview scenario.

In some places, it's no longer legal to ask about an applicant's previous compensation. But while the issue is still being debated, you'll want to be prepared with an answer.

Some would tell you to dodge the question or give a range, so you don't disclose the actual number. But according to bestselling management author and CNBC contributor Suzy Welch, the best way to secure your place at a new company and advance your career is to simply tell the truth.

"People are going to tell you that you should game this conversation," Welch tells CNBC Make It , or that "you should dodge this question by talking about ranges." "That is no way to start a relationship," she says. For her, the decision to share your salary is worth the risk. Here's Welch's two-step process for navigating this tricky interview question.

1)
Know your market value

Discussing salary is "the interview tightrope that everyone hates to walk," Welch says. To balance, you first have to know where you stand. "Be smart and do your research," she says. "Find the job's likely salary, and know what your skills are likely worth in the open market."

Do some research on sites like PayScale, Salary.com or LinkedIn Salary. These tools tell you what a job should pay and "let you know if you're earning above or below market," she says.

You may find that you're being underpaid, which Welch says can happen if you've been at your company for a long time or were hired at a low salary. You could also find yourself in the less common situation of being overpaid. Either way, you want to be prepared for an interview with concrete information about your current standing.

2)
Disclose your current salary and make your case

Once you know how you compare to people with similar jobs, be truthful about your current compensation, Welch says. Doing so shows that you're candid and have integrity. Your response could be, "My salary is X, my bonus is typically Y, for a total package of just about Z," Welch says.

After you share the number, advocate for yourself. "You can make a compelling case about why you'd be willing to take less for something like opportunity or growth, or why you should make more," she says.

Once you've made your case, there's nothing else you can do, Welch says, except wait and see how the hiring manager responds — and if they treat you with similar consideration. "If your potential employer games you in this conversation, it's a warning sign," she says."Don't ignore it."

Here’s the thing to bear in mind about the Washington Post’s report that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had the FBI execute a search warrant against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in late July: Prosecutors don’t do pre-dawn raids on the home of a cooperating witness. Manafort has publicly projected cooperation. Of course, we can’t know how cooperative he has actually been. The public has been kept in the dark about what is being investigated, and Mueller and the congressional committees are doing most of their work behind closed doors.

Nevertheless, Manafort did voluntarily testify before the Senate intelligence committee on July 25. It is not a coincidence, I suspect, that the very next morning, in the pre-dawn hours, the FBI showed up at his Alexandria, Va., home with a search warrant. Notwithstanding that Manafort had reportedly been voluntarily producing documents to congressional committees that are probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the FBI conducted what the Post describes as a “wide-ranging” search for documents. Apparently, the bureau seized voluminous records and other materials. There are two possible rationales for a search warrant under the circumstances...

First, the fishing-trip rationale: Investigators believed Manafort, who is either a subject of or witness in their investigation, was likely to destroy rather than surrender relevant evidence. Second, the brass-knuckles rationale: The prosecutor is attempting to intimidate the witness or subject — to say nothing of others who are similarly situated — into volunteering everything he may know of an incriminating nature about people the prosecutor is targeting.

In Monday’s column, I took issue with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s claim (in a Fox News interview on Sunday) that the Mueller investigation is not a fishing expedition. The DAG insists the probe has a finite scope related to Russia’s 2016 election meddling. I counter that there are no real limits on Mueller because (a) Rosenstein failed to follow federal regulations that require him to outline specific crimes the special counsel is authorized to investigate, and (b) the so-called Russia investigation is a counterintelligence investigation, which is really just an information-gathering exercise targeting a foreign power —

Meaning:Mueller could claim that anything, no matter how tangentially germane to possible explanations of Putin’s motives, is a legitimate focus of his investigation.

Now, a search warrant is issued in a criminal investigation only if a judge finds probable cause that a crime has been committed and that evidence of this crime will be found in the place to be searched. The warrant is granted on the basis of an affidavit — usually drafted by the prosecutor and sworn to by an FBI agent — which tells the court exactly what crimes the agents are investigating and describes for the court the evidence supporting the claim that there is probable cause. Moreover, if agents wish to execute a warrant before 6 a.m., they must show good cause as to why this should be permitted. Generally, the explanation involves danger that evidence will be destroyed, or that agents will be at risk, if people inside the location are awake and alert when the agents knock on the door. A standard federal search-warrant form is available online here. Note that, in addition to a description of the location to be searched, it also requires a precise description of the evidence that the investigators expect to find in the location, based on their probable-cause showing. It also indicates whether good cause has been established to execute the warrant outside of daytime hours (i.e., before 6 a.m.). I wonder if Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, to whom Mueller reports, would be willing to outline for the public the crimes for which the Manafort search warrant authorized agents to seize evidence.

This would go some of the way toward filling in the gap Rosenstein left by ignoring the regulation requiring a factual description of the criminal investigation he has authorized the special counsel to conduct.It would also give us some insight about whether the investigation is tightly related to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, as Rosenstein has intimated, or is more like a fishing expedition. Moreover, in light of the fact that Manafort has ostensibly been cooperating with congressional committees, and that Mueller has a grand jury that would have enabled him to compel Manafort to surrender evidence by subpoena, I wonder if the Justice Department would shed some light on... (a) why it was thought necessary to conduct a raid on Manafort’s home and (b) whether the special counsel and the FBI sought permission to conduct the search before 6 a.m. (i.e., in what the Post reports as the pre-dawn hours). Finally, I wonder whether the 'Democrat' deputy attorney general or the 'Rino' special counsel would inform the public whether the president of the United States is a suspect in a criminal investigation.

We really appreciate your visits! Every Friday, our goal is to provide you with a few laughs, some inspiring stories and some food for thought. We look forward to your visiting with us again next Friday! Y'all come on back now... ya hear!